Do you have frequent job changes and work experience in several places for no more than a year or even less than six months? Don’t be surprised if your feedback goes unheeded. Recruiters usually try to avoid flyers. Although in fact, a frequent change of work does not always characterize a person as a bad employee or betray in him a quarrelsome character and an eternal thirst for change. Here are some tips to prove that you are not a flyer.
Who are the “Flyers” and Why They are not Loved
Employers are in no hurry to hire a candidate who changes jobs frequently and does not stay in one place for more than a year. They fear that:
- This is a weak professional (perhaps the previous job was not up to him);
- This is a conflict or extremely uncommunicative person, he hardly adapts to a team;
- This is an eternal adventurer who quickly gets bored in one place;
- A person is not involved in work at all, does not feel responsible for the result, and is ready to break away at any moment to another place even for a slight salary increase.
In the first two cases, there is a risk of hiring a problematic employee. In the last two cases, there is a risk that even if a good specialist is hired, the place will again be vacant in just a few months. For the employer, this means economic losses. The company spends time and money on finding and hiring staff. For example, posting vacancies and access to the resume database on hh.ru is a paid service for employers. The more often you have to look for new employees, the more expenses. In addition, the absence of an employee when the old one has left and the new one has not left yet complicates work processes and can lead to a drop in income or an increase in expenses.
The adaptation of a beginner usually also means financial losses for the employer, because the first time is spent on getting to know the internal processes, nuances, and, if necessary, on training. And only after two or three months (or even more) the new employee picks up the pace to produce the results that are expected of him. With each dismissal, these processes have to be started anew.
That is why “flyers” do not like it. Employers who have already lost time and money because of such employees can then “blow on the water.” Even if the candidate is excellent in terms of experience and knowledge, a brilliant professional, but tends to change jobs often, the recruiter will think five times whether to call him for an interview, and even more so – whether to invite him to work. Of course, if you have only one case of a quick dismissal on your resume, although you have worked in other places for three or more years, this is not a problem. But, if there are two or three or more such stories, this can already create a certain image.
However, signs of unreliability can be false. A fully responsible worker, who is not at all inclined to “jump” from place to place, can create such an impression due to circumstances. There are several typical reasons for this.
1. Getting Fired From a Troubled Company
Someone gets a job in a startup, tempted by brilliant prospects, but the business does not take off and closes in the first year or is frozen for an indefinite period. And someone comes to work seriously and for a long time in a company that seems stable from the outside, but quickly discovers that in fact it is already in the process of dying. Soon you have to look for a new job.
In the first half of 2020 alone, more than 4.5 thousand Russian companies were declared bankrupt. This is the data Unified Federal Register of Information on Bankruptcy .
However, financial problems usually begin long before the business officially begins the process of bankruptcy. One of the first to feel this is employees who have interruptions in the payment of salaries. And if a company or an entrepreneur pays off the staff in black or grey schemes, then people are faced with the problem of not only salary delays, but also a noticeable reduction in its size, actually receiving only the white part.
Of course, in such a situation, people quit and look for a better life, without waiting for the official liquidation of the employer (this point may still be far away). Not everyone is lucky – in a new place, history can repeat itself.
So you can be forced to change two or three jobs in a year. If you then try to get a job in a serious white company in a market segment or region where gray and unscrupulous employers are not as common as where you worked before, then your resume may give the impression of an unreliable candidate.
What to do. When describing your work experience in your resume, make a short paragraph at the end about the reasons for dismissal.
Example.
Reasons for dismissal: financial difficulties with the employer (long interruptions in payroll).
Reasons for leaving: Closing business.
Another option is to explain the reasons for frequent job changes in a cover letter.
Either way, it’s important to be honest. You should not slander the former employer, if in fact there were no problems in the company – a potential new employer can check this.
2. Purely Formal Job Change
The division of a single business into several legal entities, the formal liquidation of companies and the creation of new ones – all these are not uncommon stories in our reality.
As a result, it happens that a person, working in fact for the same employer, according to the entries in the workbook during this time, quit five times and got a job in the new company. If you rewrite all the places and periods of work in a resume, you get a portrait of a typical “flyer”.
What to do. Explain in your resume or cover letter that you actually worked for one employer, just that the business structure consisted of several legal entities.
Also read : How to look for a job after conflict dismissal?
3. Project (temporary) Nature of Work
You have had several cases when you took on work that was original of a short-term (project) nature. For example, you were invited to work under a fixed-term employment contract or civil law only to prepare a temporary project or to complete a certain stage of work. Or you were hired to temporarily replace an absent permanent employee (for a “maternity rate”, for a long vacation, and so on).
What to do. Explain in your resume that this work was initially temporary (project) in nature.
4. Dismissal From an Unscrupulous Employer
A gross violation of rights, difficult working conditions, failure to comply with agreements on wages, work schedules, functionality, an unhealthy psychological situation in the team and a feeling of rejection from the corporate culture adopted in the company – all these are reasonable and valid reasons not to linger in a new place.
But it is hardly worth writing about these reasons for the imminent dismissal in a resume – it is better to talk about such things very carefully, even when they are asked about them at an interview.
In addition, it is one thing if you have a single story of such an unsuccessful job placement, and quite another if there have been several such situations. Of course, everything happens in life, but the recruiter may unwittingly get the impression that perhaps the real problem is in the candidate. For example, in high expectations from work or a quarrelsome character.
What to do. You can explain yourself in a cover letter without going into details. Leave a detailed explanation for the interview.
Advice for all Occasions
An explanation of the objective reasons for frequent job changes is ideally best supported by good recommendations from former managers and colleagues, both from these “fleeting” jobs and from previous ones. The impression of a candidate is always made up of the sum of the facts – it’s great if you can put the facts in your favor.
Consider which of your former colleagues would describe you as a reliable and motivated professional. Not “out of friendship” or as a favor, but because they really have reasons for such an opinion – in joint work with these people, you showed yourself that way. For example, they helped to pull out the project during an emergency and for a couple of months they additionally took over the work of a suddenly quit or sick employee, and so on.
Contact them and ask if they would mind if a potential employer calls them with a question about you. In your resume and cover letter, you can indicate that you are ready to provide references. And at the interview, give the contacts of those who agreed to recommend you.
If you have doubts about how your experience described in the resume is perceived from the employer’s point of view (after all, frequent or normal frequency of job changes is a relative concept), you can ask professionals to take a look at it and order a professional compilation of a finished resume specifically for your unique case . This service is paid.
Successful job search!
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